One of the drawbacks of buying a barebones PC like Intel’s NUC—at least if you’re a Windows user—is that it comes with no operating system. The big PC OEMs get Windows at a steep discount compared to end users, and you’ll have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 for a full OEM Windows license (and more if you want a retail version with tech support).

The other side of that coin is that barebones PCs can be good for people who aren’t planning on paying for an OS. You can use your favorite Linux distribution on a barebones PC without paying the added cost for some Windows license you have no intention of using.

As a follow-up to our original review, we’ve installed four different Linux distributions to the Haswell NUC to get an idea of what open source enthusiasts can expect to experience when they load up Linux on the hardware. We tried Ubuntu 13.10, Linux Mint 16, and Fedora 20 because of their popularity, and then we loaded up SteamOS to test out its recently acquired Intel graphics support.

Installation

UNetbootin is probably the easiest way to make USB install drives for major Linux distributions.

Andrew Cunningham

UNetbootin is still an easy way to load most Linux distributions onto a USB drive. For both Ubuntu and Mint, all you need to do is download the ISO you want, point the program at the ISO and your USB drive of choice, and UNetbootin will do the rest. For whatever reason, UNetbootin wouldn't create a functioning live USB key for Fedora—it would boot but fail over to Emergency Mode without trying to install anything. Creating USB install media with Fedora's own utility remedied the problem.

Many Windows computers include features like Fastboot or Secure Boot that need to be disabled or circumvented to use Linux in UEFI mode, and while the NUC supports these features for Windows, they aren’t enabled by default. Installing Linux on the NUC should have been the easiest part of the whole process, but for most of our distributions it ended up being a gigantic pain, and that comes down to the NUC's EFI implementation.

Enlarge/ The NUC supports features like Secure Boot, but it keeps them disabled by default. The real problem is the NUC's EFI implementation.

Andrew Cunningham

Each time we would install one of our Debian-based distros (Ubuntu, Mint, or SteamOS), the NUC would boot to the USB drive and install the operating system to the internal mSATA SSD without issue. The problem was that the NUC wouldn't see the drive as a EFI boot target, and it would refuse to boot from the drive. The first helpful suggestion I found about the issue came from Tested.com's Will Smith on the Steam community forums. He suggested that the NUC had problems with custom EFI boot locations—the NUC expects there to be a file named bootx64.efi located in the /EFI/BOOT folder on the EFI partition, and if that file is named something else and/or located elsewhere, the computer can't recognize the drive as a boot target. The Debian distros will usually try to place a bootloader named grubx64.efi in a folder named /EFI/[distro name], so the NUC wouldn't try to boot from the drive.

There are a couple of ways you can try to fix this. The first is to use Ubuntu's boot-repair tool, though it can occasionally be overzealous and inconsistent in its fixes. The second is to move and rename the files manually. While that is a little more difficult, it has the benefit of being consistent. From our Ubuntu live USB drive, finish the operating system installation but don't reboot. Instead, open a terminal window and type the following:

These instructions apply to Ubuntu specifically, but they worked the same way for SteamOS and Mint, and they should get the job done for any other Debian distribution that behaves the same way. Just check which folder the operating system stores its bootloader files in—it's /mnt/EFI/ubuntu for Ubuntu, /mnt/EFI/steamos for Steam OS, and so on. We've passed all of our findings on to Intel's NUC team, and while we haven't received a response as of publication, we hope that this problem can be fixed with a BIOS update. Update: Intel tells us that the NUC team will be addressing the bootloader issue in an upcoming BIOS release. There's no word on exactly when we can expect a fix, but one is apparently coming.

Once UEFI was working properly and the operating systems were actually booting, Ubuntu, Mint, and Fedora didn't give us any more trouble with installation. While installing SteamOS, the default image-based installer didn’t seem to want to see the internal mSATA hard drive for some reason—it would attempt to image the hard drive via CloneZilla, but it consistently errored out. It worked fine using the custom Debian-based installer, aside from the EFI problems.

Power consumption

One of the draws of the NUC, aside from its small physical footprint, is its small power footprint. In Windows, it idles at around 6W, displays YouTube videos in Chrome with about 9W, and won’t consume more than 38W even when gaming at full-tilt. Not all of the tests we ran in our original review will run under Linux, but we’ve gotten a few more numbers for our Linux distros to get an idea of how they all stack up.

Activity

Ubuntu 13.10

Linux Mint 16

Fedora 20

SteamOS Beta (1/31/2014)

Windows 8.1 x64

Idle at desktop

6.6W

6.6W

6.6W

8.2W (Gnome)/27.3W (SteamOS UI)

6.4W

Sleep mode

2.4W

2.4W

2.4W

N/A

1.1W

Watching YouTube in Chrome/Chromium

9.6W

7.9W

9.8W

N/A

9.0W

Running Portal at 1080p (title screen)

27.5W

27.7W

27.7W

27.5W

27.5W

Generally, the NUC’s power consumption figures under Linux are pretty near where they are in Windows, though Windows seems to be a little less power-hungry in sleep mode. The standard desktop Linux distributions are all pretty similar no matter what you're doing, which isn't surprising—there's a fair degree of commonality in drivers across the biggest distributions, after all.

Of the four Linux distros, SteamOS is the most interesting. For one, getting the NUC to sleep was impossible—it would go to sleep for just a couple of seconds before waking back up even if no input devices were plugged in, foreshadowing some of the other problems we’ll talk about soon. What’s more striking is just how active the SteamOS UI keeps the CPU and GPU. Sitting still on the SteamOS menus consumes almost as much power as actually playing a game. These figures might differ on a more powerful machine with a stronger GPU (it doesn’t take a whole lot to max out the HD 5000), but in any case, it’s much higher than in a less demanding desktop OS.

What really leapt out at me is how far behind Linux is in managing power consumption still. But this is an interesting write-up, as I was looking into doing just this....playing with Linux distros on a NUC.

EDIT: With all the negative downvotes I got for this, let me be clear: I like Linux and I think it's more than ready for "prime time". Was just stating a fact that they've not worked on power consumption that much, or at least not making enough headway into fool-proofing it for an idiot like me. When I run it on my Laptop, it cuts the battery life by just over a third. I'm sure someone will explain that I'm doing it all wrong and I have to re-compile my kernel and blah blah blah. But to become "ready for prime time", this shouldn't have to be the case.

Especially WiFi drivers has been a huge headache for me and Linux, and drivers in general gets very annoying on Linux if it doesn't have them built in. Google-fu is a lot of help, but oftentimes it feels like you have to read up on everything from syntax to compilation to coding. sudo apt-get or whatever is great until you have to add new repositories and you find out the one mentioned in that one blog post that covered the topic on installing third party Intel drivers doesn't exist anymore. Move to the lesser known distros and things become outright impossible.

Don't buy Intel's crap. Their wifi and bluetooth drivers have been a complete mess in Linux for well over a year now and they don't seem to be in a hurry to fix it (and yes I own several Intel wireless modules including the 7260AC that I have personally tested with 3.12.x kernels). There is a similar situation happening in Windows (though in Windows the problems seem relegated to wifi/bluetooth combo modules and only when bluetooth is being used). Needless to say I would suggest buying an Atheros AR928X dual band wireless module and installing that. I've have pretty sterling experiences with this hardware in Linux (as long as I disable power management on the device). For my bluetooth, I use the following USB module:

Note: Also in regards to the driver for the Haswell Intel video chipset - you are a bit SOL on this front. The current driver in GIT works absolutely great. But there has yet to be a final release of it. With my Intel HD 4600 on Arch Linux the current release version has a variety of issues that render it unusable. Intel's Linux support is pretty good (minus the wireless), but it still lags Windows sadly.

Good article, but one thing I just wanted to mention is that loads of people always talk about how you have to pay so much extra for Windows, but if you're using an NUC to replace an existing HTPC type device, then you may not have to pay anything at all. Assuming you have some way to transfer/install the HTPC's copy of Windows, you can just do that instead; it may require an extra activation step, and of course you shouldn't do it if you want to keep running the HTPC, but I'm pretty sure you can run Windows on whatever you like, so long as you don't run it on more than machines that it's licensed for.

It's the same deal with people complaining about Steam Machines either having less games on Steam OS or costing extra to add Windows; if you're using it to replace a gaming rig, then you can just transfer Windows over to the Steam Machine at zero cost.

Obviously if the machine is in fact a new, additional machine that isn't replacing anything you already have, then yes, you need to get a fresh new OS, unless you have a family license I suppose, as that might cover the extra machine. Don't get me wrong, the pricing for Windows is pretty ridiculous for regular home consumers, but if you want to stay legal there are still options for using an existing Windows install, which I think is worth keeping in mind.

I do like Linux, and I do think for an NUC it's generally great, but there's still the occasional thing you just can't do with it.

Installing the libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 and libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 packages in Mint likely would have solved the black texture problem. Mint doesn't install the Mesa texture compression packages by default, resulting in black textures in Portal and Half Life 2.

Installing the libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 and libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 packages in Mint likely would have solved the black texture problem. Mint doesn't install the Mesa texture compression packages by default, resulting in black textures in Portal and Half Life 2.

I want to like Linux. The idea of an os that does all of my daily stuff free is really appealing, that's why I keep coming to these sort of articles. Then I read a comment like this one and I can tell instantly that its still not quite ready for prime time. Maybe next year..

or if someone develops protected pathway and out of the box blu ray and cable card support.

Good article, but one thing I just wanted to mention is that loads of people always talk about how you have to pay so much extra for Windows, but if you're using an NUC to replace an existing HTPC type device, then you may not have to pay anything at all. Assuming you have some way to transfer/install the HTPC's copy of Windows, you can just do that instead; it may require an extra activation step, and of course you shouldn't do it if you want to keep running the HTPC, but I'm pretty sure you can run Windows on whatever you like, so long as you don't run it on more than machines that it's licensed for.

It's the same deal with people complaining about Steam Machines either having less games on Steam OS or costing extra to add Windows; if you're using it to replace a gaming rig, then you can just transfer Windows over to the Steam Machine at zero cost.

Obviously if the machine is in fact a new, additional machine that isn't replacing anything you already have, then yes, you need to get a fresh new OS, unless you have a family license I suppose, as that might cover the extra machine. Don't get me wrong, the pricing for Windows is pretty ridiculous for regular home consumers, but if you want to stay legal there are still options for using an existing Windows install, which I think is worth keeping in mind.

I do like Linux, and I do think for an NUC it's generally great, but there's still the occasional thing you just can't do with it.

This is only true of Retail licences IIRC. OEM licences are tied to a specific PC. That includes the $100 OEM licence you or Iight buy at our local computer store. (I think the technical method is linking it to the motherboard, but the EULA states PC)

I'm running ubuntu 13.10 on the new i5 NUC that I bought this week in Europe, I did not have the installation issues mentioned in the article. Perhaps they've changed something.

I'm running the latest BIOS - there's a chance the problem is related to installing Windows first and then installing Linux afterward, something about the EFI NVRAM entry not being updated when Linux installs. Can any other NUC owners confirm or deny?

To clarify, I'm not describing a dual-boot setup - I had Windows 8.1 installed before, then completely wiped the drive including the EFI partition and installed Linux.

Support for the Intel 7260 adapter in the Linux kernel is still relatively new—Ubuntu 13.10 uses kernel version 3.11, and support was introduced in version 3.10. We’d expect the bugs to be ironed out in coming updates.

The current -proposed kernel in Ubuntu 13.10 (3.11.0-17) already contains one 7260-related patch:

Installing the libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 and libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 packages in Mint likely would have solved the black texture problem. Mint doesn't install the Mesa texture compression packages by default, resulting in black textures in Portal and Half Life 2.

I want to like Linux. The idea of an os that does all of my daily stuff free is really appealing, that's why I keep coming to these sort of articles. Then I read a comment like this one and I can tell instantly that its still not quite ready for prime time. Maybe next year..

or if someone develops protected pathway and out of the box blu ray and cable card support.

Right, because errors are a thing of the past on alternative operating systems, and because Linux gaming is such a mature conception that these errors were completely unanticipated.

Linux gaming sure has problems. If you're a gamer it should be pretty obvious that you have to wait a couple more years for Linux to catch up.

He was trying to make a point. Don't take it literal and simplify what it actually means. There's always that thing that doesn't work and needs you to do something obscure to get it to work. This applies to many things, not just gaming. And maybe it's the fault of manufacturers or shameless companies or arrogant developers, but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't matter. For the past ten years I've been following Linux always thinking this is The year, and it doesn't matter because The year still isn't here yet. You have to really want to change to Linux to put up with these issues. No one is saying that other OS don't have issues, but you're trading known for unknown, and not many are willing to make that trade.

Windows also has "issues". You may not be conscious of them any more, because you've learned to deal with them. Same with Linux.

Change is hard. I personally find the overall experience better on Linux, but that depends on what you do with your computer. As someone else said, the ecosystem probably isn't the best one for gamers, yet. SteamOS is probably gonna help that a heck of a lot in the coming year(s).

Installing the libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 and libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 packages in Mint likely would have solved the black texture problem. Mint doesn't install the Mesa texture compression packages by default, resulting in black textures in Portal and Half Life 2.

As someone else said, the ecosystem probably isn't the best one for gamers, yet. SteamOS is probably gonna help that a heck of a lot in the coming year(s).

It depends on the type of games. I have a small collection of old games that I'd like to keep running. Some of them are Windows 3.1/95 era games (Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, You Don't Know Jack, etc.) that I simply can't get running on 64 bit Windows due to the 16bit nature of the games. Some of thse games are perfect for my youngest child. 5 year old computer + Fedora + Wine = 16bit goodness.

I toatally agree about newer games though. If it isn't available through the Linux side of Steam then you are probably in for a bumpy ride.

I'm keeping my eye on the NUC to replace that 5 year old desktop when the time comes.

It depends on the type of games. I have a small collection of old games that I'd like to keep running. Some of them are Windows 3.1/95 era games (Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, You Don't Know Jack, etc.) that I simply can't get running on 64 bit Windows due to the 16bit nature of the games. Some of thse games are perfect for my youngest child. 5 year old computer + Fedora + Wine = 16bit goodness.

You could take the yo-ho-ho route and install Win9x into a virtual machine. I'd recommend VMware Player for this because VirtualBox lacks guest utilities for 9x, but VMware does a really good job anyway.

You could take the yo-ho-ho route and install Win9x into a virtual machine. I'd recommend VMware Player for this because VirtualBox lacks guest utilities for 9x, but VMware does a really good job anyway.

I could and I had considered that. I do have Win98 media (I can't believe it either). The thing is, booting a computer, logging in, then booting a virtual machine, THEN launching the game was a little too clunky for a 5 year old. Fedora and/or Ubuntu are far easier to just navigate to the program icon.

The desktop isn't a gaming powerhouse. It's an old Dell Optiplex SFF cast-off from work. It had an OEM Vista license with it. I'll take Linux, thanks.

Problems crop up with any OS and you have to go hunting through the thickets of the internet... My girlfriend's Windows ultrabook has bloatware on it called "McAfee Anti-theft" that keeps popping up messages, and getting rid of it cleanly is literally impossible. Took me at least 20 minutes of googling to work out exactly what was going on. I think people should make a full cost-benefit comparison of using Linux rather than treating any install issue as a dealbreaker.

Thank you for this. Please continue doing articles that look at what works, what doesn't work and what kind of works on Linux. It's difficult to find this information. If you do hardware reviews, please also to some testing under Linux.

Problems crop up with any OS and you have to go hunting through the thickets of the internet... My girlfriend's Windows ultrabook has bloatware on it called "McAfee Anti-theft" that keeps popping up messages, and getting rid of it cleanly is literally impossible. Took me at least 20 minutes of googling to work out exactly what was going on. I think people should make a full cost-benefit comparison of using Linux rather than treating any install issue as a dealbreaker.

Except, you know, thats an OEM installing bloatware, I have never encountered anything by McAfee when I installed the OS myself.

Installing the libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 and libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 packages in Mint likely would have solved the black texture problem. Mint doesn't install the Mesa texture compression packages by default, resulting in black textures in Portal and Half Life 2.

I want to like Linux. The idea of an os that does all of my daily stuff free is really appealing, that's why I keep coming to these sort of articles. Then I read a comment like this one and I can tell instantly that its still not quite ready for prime time. Maybe next year..

or if someone develops protected pathway and out of the box blu ray and cable card support.

Perfectly valid point of view. In many ways Linux is still a tinkerers OS. That being said, distro's like Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mint have made great strides in this area in the last several years. I'd say the only major thing they are lagging on is gaming and Valve is working on that.

Installing the libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0 and libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 packages in Mint likely would have solved the black texture problem. Mint doesn't install the Mesa texture compression packages by default, resulting in black textures in Portal and Half Life 2.

Problems crop up with any OS and you have to go hunting through the thickets of the internet... My girlfriend's Windows ultrabook has bloatware on it called "McAfee Anti-theft" that keeps popping up messages, and getting rid of it cleanly is literally impossible. Took me at least 20 minutes of googling to work out exactly what was going on. I think people should make a full cost-benefit comparison of using Linux rather than treating any install issue as a dealbreaker.

Except, you know, thats an OEM installing bloatware, I have never encountered anything by McAfee when I installed the OS myself.

Sadly though, this has become the de facto state of affairs when buying a Windows PC, and it contributes to the frustration and discontent among PC users. Microsoft is not (literally) at fault, but generally gets the blame.

Virtually everyone who chooses to use Linux installs it themselves, from scratch, and can avoid this nonsense. Most Windows users (other than enthusiasts who build systems themselves) do not get that choice. But if Linux instead of Windows were the "standard" OS, then I fear the situation would be completely reversed. The hardware business is so cutthroat and price driven that PC makers resort to all kinds of sketchy bundling deals to offset their cost of sales, or make their own bloatware to keep their own brands prominent (instead of the OS maker's).

Honestly, this is one of the best things about owning a Microsoft Surface, or just buying a Windows device directly from a Microsoft Store--Microsoft removes all the bloat and crapware.

(Sorry if this is a bit off topic. I enjoyed the article Andrew. I personally am a Mint fan--I do hope this distro gains more support.)

I'm just amazed the sound worked without a hassle. I've found intel HDA to be a real PITA.

Regarding Fedora, without getting into disty wars, opensuse usually is better for desktop use. Fedora is more suited for a server.

I just did my first Linux on a UEFI equipped mobo and it was totally transparent to Opensuse. I'm on the built in graphics for whatever they put on the Xeon E3 1200. Mesa was installed by default with opensuse.

I've had such bad luck with power saving features that I don't use them. Both on Windows and Linux. A lot of USB peripherals have issues with the computer going in and out of these states.

Regarding moving OEM linux around between machines, it is a terms or service issue foremost. You can move it around three times as far as I can tell. Basically things break, and it is a little ridiculous to sell an OS where if the mobo breaks and you want to replace it, that you need to buy a new copy of the OS. Win7 sniffs your hardware and creates a profile of the system. It probably phones home to Redmond. If the system changes enough that it thinks it has been moved, the OS makes you do a song and dance to reactivate it.

I've had to do this once. The mobo failed due to Chinese cap syndrome. I couldn't get a replacement mobo to use the same socket. So I pulled the raid from the Intel box and put it in another system that was running linux. Windows complained, phoned home, put me on probation or whatever, but eventually let me run to normal operation.

The ridiculous price of Windows and these silly restrictions soured me on Windows. The Snowden revelations finally convinced me to leave windows behind, though I have a HTPC still running Win7 due to DRM and any notebook I have gets dual booted since I already paid for the OS.

Retail windows should be about $50. MS is ruining the experience for home builders.

I don't understand the purpose of including Ubuntu if you already have Mint (I'm assuming you aren't using Mint Debian, and Mint is just an Ubuntu fork). You have two Ubuntus, Fedora and Debian (SteamOS). It would be more useful to drop Ubuntu and do something like OpenSUSE.

Then again I don't know if I understand the purpose of this article, of course Linux works on these. They are just PCs.

Did you read the part of the article where a bunch of stuff didn't work? :-) And while Mint and Ubuntu are obviously closely related, the distros are different enough to have different problems.

I don't understand the purpose of including Ubuntu if you already have Mint (I'm assuming you aren't using Mint Debian, and Mint is just an Ubuntu fork). You have two Ubuntus, Fedora and Debian (SteamOS). It would be more useful to drop Ubuntu and do something like OpenSUSE.

Then again I don't know if I understand the purpose of this article, of course Linux works on these. They are just PCs.

I think the purpose was to install each on the NUC and see what problems occur with each. Also, W7 or W8 were not tested because of cost but I would be interested to see what problems occurred with them.

I have installed a number of Window versions and Linus distros. I have found device driver problems with both Linux and Windows; particularly with Wi-Fi adapters and printers. Linux is generally better about supporting older hardware while current Windows versions generally are better with the newest hardware. Linux support of newer hardware is improving especially with the Ubuntu family.

Interesting... I have the Dell XPS with the Intel 7260 Wi-Fi card and bluetooth works fine. I even tried transferring files and stuff and everything worked. I haven't tried to connect to 5GHz wifi point because I haven't seen any at all. Considering that ac support is really new it is possible that you've hit a bug in the drivers.

Do the Linuxy thing and submit a bug report on Launchpad or the likes.

edit:A word or two about the efi. There is a reason why Google implements coreboot support for their hardware that's being released as chromebooks. Most of the manufacturers out there have no interest in making proper efi implementation, so most of what we have nowadays sucks donkey balls big time. Except, now it's worse because compared to legacy bios efi is much more complicated and new.

I'm just amazed the sound worked without a hassle. I've found intel HDA to be a real PITA.

Regarding Fedora, without getting into disty wars, opensuse usually is better for desktop use. Fedora is more suited for a server.

I just did my first Linux on a UEFI equipped mobo and it was totally transparent to Opensuse. I'm on the built in graphics for whatever they put on the Xeon E3 1200. Mesa was installed by default with opensuse.

I've had such bad luck with power saving features that I don't use them. Both on Windows and Linux. A lot of USB peripherals have issues with the computer going in and out of these states.

Regarding moving OEM linux around between machines, it is a terms or service issue foremost. You can move it around three times as far as I can tell. Basically things break, and it is a little ridiculous to sell an OS where if the mobo breaks and you want to replace it, that you need to buy a new copy of the OS. Win7 sniffs your hardware and creates a profile of the system. It probably phones home to Redmond. If the system changes enough that it thinks it has been moved, the OS makes you do a song and dance to reactivate it.

I've had to do this once. The mobo failed due to Chinese cap syndrome. I couldn't get a replacement mobo to use the same socket. So I pulled the raid from the Intel box and put it in another system that was running linux. Windows complained, phoned home, put me on probation or whatever, but eventually let me run to normal operation.

The ridiculous price of Windows and these silly restrictions soured me on Windows. The Snowden revelations finally convinced me to leave windows behind, though I have a HTPC still running Win7 due to DRM and any notebook I have gets dual booted since I already paid for the OS.

Retail windows should be about $50. MS is ruining the experience for home builders.

You can disable power management of USB, even specific ports, pretty easily (using powertop and saving the changes so they are enabled on reboot is probably the easiest way to do this selectively).I'd guess the reason for the higher idle on Linux is that he hasn't enabled the activation/sleep states for various peripherals (like USB but also PCI devices, like Ethernet/wlan, etc).As for windows comparisons you will get the most similar experience with Intel graphics. Ootb it should work nearly alike (except for power management which is usually not enabled, aside from CPU/GPU, for reasons of extremely inconsistent acpi implementations). Likewise if the distros are running the same kernel hardware enablement is typically very, very similar (especially comparing kernels that have extremely few patches like fedora relative to upstream). To get better Wi-Fi Andrew would likely have needed to install the latest kernels 3.13/3.14, even if they haven't reached stability for the distros...3.14, for instance, is still in its merge window I believe).

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.